How to animate different parts of the same mesh object
Hee very nice idea! 

There are a few options here. 

First of all, you could rig the mesh with an armature. This might be a bit time consuming.

Also you could try and hook every eyelid with a hook modifier. But this will get messy very quickly. You'd have to parent all the hook empties back to a master that controls the rotation of the whole mesh.

Lastly, this is what I would do in your case. You say it's just a matter of scaling the eye lids, make shape keys for every seperate animation and build up a shape key library if you will. Every think you want to be able to control should be a unique shape key. The shape keys should 'add up' to each other.

Hope this is helpfull, if you have any questions you can contact me.

Ciao,

Mv.artz